The ability to manage and control the typical Web site has become an increasingly demanding task. This is due to the complex nature of Web sites and their use of various technologies that provide dynamic content with the aid of complex content management systems utilizing database systems. These Web sites are designed to provide the optimal experience for the human user. This is often done by using sophisticated graphics and multimedia to provide a highly visual and personalized experience for visitors. For the online marketer, all these factors provide a difficult environment for them to do their job of ensuring high visibility of their Web site, analyzing customer behavior and then acting on that behavior in a timely and responsive fashion.
From the situation described above, three primary factors for which help is required may be identified: visibility, control and analysis.
“Visibility” involves all the points of presence that a Web site provider has on the Internet that allow visitors to find links to the provider's Web site. This could include:                Search results in search engines        Banner advertisements        Affiliate Links        Promotional Emails which include Links        
In each case a Universal Resource Locator (URL) or Web address is provided that allows visitors to click on and find a page within the provider's Web site.
Search engine visibility is extremely difficult as search engines typically use programs called “spiders” to visit Web sites, parse the text and then determine what terms, known as a keyphrase, best describes a provider's Web site. Such a process precludes search engines from seeing the bulk of most Web sites as they are only able to see the text on static Web pages and not the dynamic content held in databases nor the content held in graphics and multimedia. This situation leads search engines to often misrepresent or under-represent Web sites and the content they hold. To compound the problem, each search engine uses different criteria for ranking making it even more difficult to find a single page structure that appeals to them all. This also has an impact on the available number of pages that visitors doing searches could be directed to in order to find the content they are after. The visibility problem has been dealt with in the past by creating “doorway” pages for both people and search engines to enter through, but while this is a refinement of the problem it does not solve the problem as a balance between what the search engines see and what people see must still be struck.
“Control” relates to the ability, when directing visitors to a provider's Web site, to send them to the appropriate “landing point”. That is, send them to the most appropriate page rather than just to the Home page of the Web site. This is often a difficult task, especially when it is desired to change the page to which to direct visitors. In some cases, this is just not possible. For example, with search engines, if a page is indexed, the URL to which visitors will be directed cannot be “changed” at all. Similar cases with varying degrees of difficulty can be made for banner advertisements, affiliate links and promotional emails.
“Analysis” is most important to judge the success of the Visibility and Control aspects of the process with respect to driving quality traffic to some known goal in a provider's Web site such as a sale for example. Thus, analysis in this case should provide the maximum amount of information between source and sale. While analysis of Web traffic is quite common, it is limited in its ability to easily identify the source of the traffic and also in how well integrated it is with the Visibility and Control aspects. Having determined successes and deficiencies, it is necessary to be able to easily and in real time make changes to the Visibility and Control aspects. If possible, some situations should be handled automatically. Existing solutions track traffic once it comes to a provider's site but only determine its source with a great deal of work and often requiring changes to the Web site to do so. These solutions have no integration with the Visibility and Control aspects.